Not long ago, I took a call from a woman who was upset over gum chewing at Mass. Hers was not the first such complaint I have heard over the years. In fact, gum chewing at Mass is one of my pet peeves. Just do a little Googling on the subject and you will be amazed at the number of online articles, blogs, and church bulletins that speak out about the problem. Some of the stories are downright disturbing. Like the time someone found a waxy glob of gum stuck on the side of the hymnal rack with...

I like to read before I go to bed. Sometimes my little nightstand becomes a leaning tower with stacks of books piling up from my nightly reads. The book currently at the top of my stack is The Basic Book of the Eucharist by Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. This little book came to my attention while rummaging through my bookshelves trying to find something to read. I was only two...

As a new Catholic many years ago, there were two rituals during the Mass that particularly appealed to me: holding hands during the Our Father and extending the sign of peace. Now I go out of my way to avoid the former (head bowed, hands folded) and oftentimes find myself gritting my teeth during the latter (not feeling peaceful at all, to be honest). For the purpose of this post, I'll focus on the sign of peace.

The early Church Fathers are indispensable resources for Catholic apologetics, helping to bridge the gap between our own time and the age of the apostles. Not only do they provide extrabiblical verification of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, they also provide a great deal of insight into what the early Christians believed and how they interpreted Scripture.

This can go a long way to demonstrate that certain Catholic distinctives have been believed from the very beginning. One...

In my 2011 debate with Dr. Peter Barnes, a Presbyterian minister and apologist in Australia, the topic was the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and it centered on Jesus’ famous words in John 6:53: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” After about three hours of debate, I could sum up...